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Long Beach Free Food, Deals, & a Free Ride! Get Goodies for Voting!

Election day is tomorrow and regardless of who you choose, it is important that we all take the time to vote! In previous elections, only 54% of Americans have voted. How can we progress if we aren’t helping choose the direction we are going. Taking the time to express your opinion can help Long Beach stay preserving the Lifestyle you Love. When it is time for you to make a big choice such as Buying or Selling your home, decisions made tomorrow will have a great impact on your experience. Besides, there are whole bunch of discounts and freebies out that there that you can only get when you vote. Ricardo the Realtor and his team realize that all of us have taken some effort to prepare for voting and want to share all the ways we have found to give yourself a treat!

Here are some of the Election Day Promotions we could uncover. Tell us: Do you know of any other Election Day freebies? If so, write in and let us know.

Voting Makes Me Hungry:

Whether you take-away a savory dinner to enjoy at home or await the returns in camaraderie at one of the viewing parties, your “I Voted” sticker will score some points with your taste buds and your wallet anywhere around town. If you voted absentee, perhaps you’ll want to carry your stub or some other proof with you so you can make your case. Check below for a deal near you:

Starbucks: Free tall coffee at any Starbucks. Starbucks will give you a FREE tall (12 oz) cup of brewed coffee at no charge (limit one per customer) as a celebration of this important day.

Chick-fil-A: Free Chicken Sandwich at Chick-fil-A. Most of the of 1,400 Chick-fil-A restaurants are handing out chicken sandwiches.

Pinkberry: Win a Free small Yogurt with toppings at Pinkberry.The frozen-yogurt seller is holding a social media contest on Election Day asking fans to post pictures and vote for their favorite flavor by using the hashtag #pinkthevote on Twitter. The company will choose 10 winners randomly on Nov. 6 and they’ll each win a free small yogurt with toppings.

Frosted Cupcakery (Belmont Shore): Buy 1 get 1 Free cupcake at Frosted Cupcakery. This bakery is doing their part to encourage you to vote on Election Day. Stop in, show them you voted, buy a cupcake and get a cupcake FREE. This is the perfect opportunity to try that flavor that’s been tempting you, but you weren’t quite ready to commit to. Also, come in and get a free mini sample of their latest creation: Bacon Cornbread!

Ben & Jerry’s: Free cone at Ben & Jerry’s. Get some free Ice Cream at Ben & Jerry’s by showing your “I voted” sticker. They want to thank you for voting by giving you a free scoop of ice cream!

Krispy Kreme: Free donut from Krispy Kreme. Do your eyes glaze over just thinking about politics these days? Well, here’s your chance to get something else glazed: International cruller chain Krispy Kreme is giving you a free star-shaped doughnut decorated with red and blue sprinkles to anyone who votes in the general election. And who doesn’t love tasty donuts!

All you can eat pasta and Pint Nite at K.C. Branaghan’s. Get the Best Pasta in Long Beach for $9.95, ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT! Also, this Irish Pub and Restaurant is having their pint nite on Election day. Come try a tasty Lagunitas Lil Sumpin Wild Ale. Buy the beer, and keep the special Lagunitas Glass, refills $1 off.

Panama Joe’s(Belmont Shore): Buy one, get a drink for a quarter at Panama Joe’s. Head over to this bar for their unique Panama Joe’s Election Day Happy Hour. Buy one, get one for a quarter drinks, plus free appetizer platters for us to enjoy for every 8 girls in attendance!

Voting Makes Me Tired:

Now there is no excuse! Did you know that you could get a free ride to the polls? Well now you do! How about going to a relaxing yoga class afterward to unwind for free. Voting doesn’t have to be so stressful or tiring!

Long Beach Yellow Cab Co-op: Get a free cab ride to the Poll from Long Beach Cab Co-op. Happy Election Day! Get a FREE Ride to the Poll with Long Beach Yellow Cab! Call them at (310) 817-6615. Visit the City Clerk’s website here to find your nearest polling place.

Yoga Classes: About 50 yoga studios around our region plan to offer free yoga classes on Election Day Tuesday, November 6. Tip: come early and bring a yoga mat along with you. Call your local yogi and get your stretch on!

Voting Makes Me Want To Shop Online!

There are a lot of great and a lot of weird deals out there for your patriotistic spirit! The options online definitely reach to the extremes. Take a look at all these intriguing options. Remember, Christmas will be here before you know it.

Groupon Election Day Deals:Groupon, the online discount spot is having a themed event. To mirror the current close race, they are having a mock vote themselves: Chester vs. Quincy. Settle the election controversy of 1883! Vote for Chester or Quincy by purchasing deals endorsed by their estates.

The Merci: This online gift boutique has an “I Voted” special on Election Day. Customers will receive 11% off all U.S.-made products and $6 flat-rate shipping.

Castle Ink: Castle Ink, a site for buying recyclable ink cartridges and laser toners, is offering 20% off its products.

Big Hot Dog: This hot-dog seller has a special discount on its hot-dog-making kit (hot dog, buns and condiments) for $129.95 instead of its regular $169.95 price only on Election Day. For those not familiar with the brand, this is no ordinary throw-on-the-barbeque hot dog: These 16 inches long, weigh seven pounds and contain 40 servings per dog, according to the company. The 2013 Guinness World Records named Big Hot Dog as the largest commercially available hot dog.

1stFrame.com: Until Nov. 10, the custom-picture-frame seller is offering 12% off orders with coupon code VOTE2012. The promotion is targeted to campaign season photos (you can view the frames specific to the political season here), but in case you don’t have an election picture you want to hang in your living room, the discount is available for any purchase.

Purina: The pet-food distributor, Purina is hosting “America’s Pet Debate” to answer the age-old question: Who’s better — cats or dogs? Pet lovers can cast their vote on Purina’s website or Facebook page until Nov. 8. For every vote cast, Purina will donate $1, up to $100,000, to Pet Partners’ Veteran Programs, which helps fund pet therapy for U.S. veterans who need assistance. The winner will be announced on Nov. 9.

It’s our time to get out their and voice our opinions. It can be stressful sifting through all the information to determine what you feel is the right choices. But we can make Election Day a lot more enjoyable by taking advantage of all the great promotions. Utilize a free Cab ride to get you to your local Polling Place. When you have finished voting go get yourself a free coffee or appetizer or go relax and have a beer while the results roll in. Take advantage of all of Lifestyles of Long Beach research. All around town and on the web is a lot of cool deals that can make this years voting experience a lot more fun.

You can save hundreds of dollars a month by buying a home instead of renting – especially if you can get today’s low mortgage rates, itemize your tax deductions and plan to live there for 7 years.

The most important housing decision that most consumers face is whether to rent or to buy. So to help them with this decision, we took a look at the key market factors affecting the cost of homeownership. First off, asking home prices have started to rebound and have risen by 2.3% year over year in August (3.8% excluding foreclosures); however, rents have risen more (4.7%). This means that prices are lower relative to rents than they were a year ago. But more importantly, mortgage rates have fallen: the best rates this summer have been around 3.5%, while last summer rates were closer to 4.5%. Based on asking prices and rents during the summer of 2012, buying is now 45% cheaper than renting in the 100 largest U.S. metros, on average – that’s a savings of $771 a month. If you plan to stay in a home for 7 years, which is the average time that Americans traditionally live in a home before moving again,it is more affordable to buy than to rent in ALL of the 100 largest metros in the U.S.

Costs aside, the decision to rent or buy a home is very personal. There’s a strong emotional component: some people want the security of homeownership and others want the footloose freedom of renting. But the financial factors are also very personal because the decision to rent or buy depends on:

Can you qualify for a mortgage at the best rate available?

Which tax bracket are you in, and do you itemize your deductions?

How long will you stay in your home?

To calculate whether renting or buying costs less, we assume people can get a low mortgage rate of 3.5%, itemize their federal tax deductions and are in the 25% tax bracket, and will stay in their home for seven years. (Below, we’ll show how changing these assumptions can affect the rent-versus-buy math.) We do the following calculations:

First, we looked at all the homes for sale and rentals listed on Trulia in June, July and August 2012. On for-sale homes, we took the asking price and estimated what it would rent for; for rentals, we took the asking rent and estimated what it would sell for. That way, we can calculate the average rent and asking price for an identical set of properties in a metro area, for a direct apples-to-apples comparison. By looking at homes currently for sale or rent, we’re able to illustrate the actual housing options that consumers face right now.

Second, we estimated the total costs of renting and buying for the typical property in a metro over a seven-year period. We factored in all the costs of homeownership (e.g., closing costs, maintenance, insurance, taxes, etc.), along with the tax benefit of deducting mortgage interest and property taxes, as well as the proceeds from selling the home after seven years with modest home price appreciation. On the rental side, we factored in renters’ insurance and the security deposit. Finally, we calculate the net-present-value of all those costs to capture the opportunity cost of tying your money up in a down payment. This gives us the total cost of buying versus renting. We then calculated the dollar difference and percentage difference between renting and buying.

Finally, we looked at alternative scenarios of the costs of renting versus buying, by changing the mortgage rate, the income tax bracket for tax deductions, and the time horizon.

Where Buying is a Slam DunkWith a 20% down payment, a 30-year fixed mortgage rate at 3.5% and at the 25% federal tax bracket, homeownership is cheaper than renting in all of the 100 largest metros by a wide margin. There is no market where the financial decision is even close, so long as you plan to stay in the home for at least seven years, get 3.5% mortgage, and itemize your tax deductions. However, how much cheaper it is to buy a home than to rent really depends a LOT on where you live.

As always if you are looking to Buy or Sell your home… please contact our Team of Professionals today. We can help guide you through the process and help you reach your goals today.

But what if you can’t get the best mortgage rate, don’t itemize your tax deductions or stay in your home for less than seven years? Each of those raises the cost of homeownership, so buying wouldn’t be quite as good of a deal relative to renting. Here’s why each matters:

The best mortgage rates are available for people with the best credit scores – and a not-so-hot credit score could make your mortgage a full percentage point higher, which translates to at least a 10% difference in your monthly mortgage payment.

Itemizing your tax deductions lets you subtract your mortgage interest and property tax payments from your pre-tax income, which lowers your tax burden especially if you’re in a higher tax bracket. How much does not itemizing raise the cost of homeownership? It depends on your tax bracket and the amount of mortgage interest and property taxes you would deduct.

Selling a home in less than seven years after buying it means that you’re spreading your buying and selling closing costs overfewer years – making the average monthly cost of homeownership higher.

To see how your mortgage rate, tax bracket and time horizon affect the cost of renting versus buying, let’s look at several scenarios for a few large metros:

SCENARIO

New York

LA

Boston

Atlanta

3.5% mortgage, 25% tax bracket, stay 7 years (baseline)

-31%

-32%

-41%

-57%

4.5% mortgage *

-23%

-24%

-34%

-53%

Not itemizing tax deductions *

-18%

-21%

-30%

-50%

Stay 5 years *

-21%

-22%

-32%

-52%

4.5% mortgage, not itemizing, AND 5 years

3%

-1%

-12%

-40%

* For these scenarios, the factors not mentioned are the same as the baseline.

Take Los Angeles, for instance. The top row shows that if you can (1) get a 3.5% mortgage, (2) are in the 25% tax bracket and itemize your deductions, and (3) stay 7 years, it’s 32% cheaper to buy than to rent.

Change any one of those scenarios, and buying is still cheaper than renting but less so:

With a 4.5% mortgage instead of a 3.5% mortgage, buying drops from 32% cheaper than renting to 24% cheaper.

But all three – the 4.5% mortgage, not itemizing, and staying only 5 years – makes buying just 1% cheaper than renting – as the bottom row shows.

In New York, these same differences make buying 3% MORE expensive than renting instead of 31% cheaper. In fact, with a 4.5% mortgage, not itemizing and staying only 5 years, buying is more expensive than renting in Honolulu(by 13%), San Francisco (by 10%), and San Jose (by 4%), too.

In the other 96 of the 100 largest metros, though, buying is still cheaper than renting. In Atlanta, for instance, where buying is 57% cheaper than renting in the best of circumstances (3.5% mortgage, itemizing, and staying 7 years), buying remains 40% cheaper even with a 4.5% mortgage, not itemizing, and staying only 5 years. In fact, today’s low mortgage rates make it financially better to buy even if you only stay put for 3 years in many metros. But buying a home also involves a lot of time, emotional energy and financial risk, so we can’t really recommend buying a home that you plan to live in for just 3 years even if the financial calculation is in favor of buying. Money isn’t everything.

1) When you add up all of your income from every possible source, and that total is less than $200,000 ($250,000 on a joint tax return), you will NOT be subject to this tax.
2) The 3.8% tax will NEVER be collected as a transfer tax on real estate of any type, so you’ll NEVER pay this tax at the time that you purchase a home or other investment property.
3) You’ll NEVER pay this tax at settlement when you sell your home or investment property. Any capital gain you realize at settlement is just one component of that year’s gross income.
4) If you sell your principal residence, you will still receive the full benefit of the $250,000 (single tax return)/$500,000 (married filing joint tax return) exclusion on the sale of that home. If your capital gain is greater than these amounts, then you will include any gain above these amounts as income on your Form 1040 tax return. Even then, if your total income (including this taxable portion of gain on your residence) is less than the $200,000/$250,000 amounts, you will NOT pay this tax. If your total income is more than these amounts, a formula will protect some portion of your investment.
5) The tax applies to other types of investment income, not just real estate. If your income is more than the $200,000/$250,000 amount, then the tax formula will be applied to capital gains, interest income, dividend income and net rents (i.e., rents after expenses).
6) The tax goes into effect in 2013. If you have investment income in 2013, you won’t pay the 3.8% tax until you file your 2013 Form 1040 tax return in 2014. The 3.8% tax for any later year will be paid in the following calendar year when the tax returns are filed.

7) In any particular year, if you have NO income from capital gains, rents, interest or dividends, you’ll NEVER pay this tax, even if you have millions of dollars of other types of income.
8) The formula that determines the amount of 3.8% tax due will ALWAYS protect $200,000 ($250,000 on a joint return) of your income from any burden of the 3.8% tax. For example, if you are single and have a total of $201,000 income, the 3.8% tax would NEVER be imposed on more than $1000.
9) It’s true that investment income from rents on an investment property could be subject to the 3.8% tax. BUT: The only rental income that would be included in your gross income and therefore possibly subject to the tax is net rental income: gross rents minus expenses like depreciation, interest, property tax, maintenance and utilities.
10) The tax was enacted along with the health care legislation in 2010. It was added to the package just hours before the final vote and without review. NAR strongly opposed the tax at the time, and remains hopeful that it will not go into effect. The tax will no doubt be debated during the upcoming tax reform debates in 2013.

(National Association of Realtors)

Lifestyles of Long Beach and Real Estate

Long Beach is comprised of communities that have something to offer everyone. These neighborhoods are all unique in their own ways. So if your looking to Buy or Sell your next home, work with a Local Team of Realtors that understands where we live.

For all of your Real Estate needs and more… Call Ricardo the Realtor. Assuring you that my team of Realtors will make your Real Estate dreams a reality.

April 11 – Roar In Belmont Shore – 6-9 p.m. on Second St. between Nieto and Corona avenues. Expected to include a car show, live music, driver autograph sessions and more! Charity event to follow at McKenna’s On The Bay, 190 N. Marina Dr., Long Beach.

April 12 – Tecate Thursday Thunder on Pine – 6:30-10 p.m. on Pine Ave. between 1st and 3rd streets. Among the activities: IZOD IndyCar Series pit stop demonstrations, freestyle motocross, live music, driver autograph sessions and the finals of the Tecate Light Miss Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach!

April 13 – Toyota Grand Prix Charity Ball – 6-10 p.m. at the Westin Long Beach, 333 E. Ocean Blvd. Cocktail reception, dinner, dancing and live and silent auctions. Chance to bid on autographed items, original artwork and a ride in the 2013 Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race!